We are now running down the
western slope two hundred and twenty-five miles from San
Francisco, with mines on both sides, and numerous flumes which
tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch Flat. Shades of
Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook
these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast!
A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue!
How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life,
how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America
had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet. His
reputation in Europe proved his originality. The fact is,
American poets have been only English "with a difference."
Tennyson might have written the "Psalm of Life," Browning
"Thanatopsis," but who could have written "Her Letter," or "Flynn
of Virginia," or "Jim," or "Chiquita"? An American, flesh and
bone, and none other. If the East would only discard him, as
Edinburgh society did his greater prototype, he might be forced
to return to his "native heath" in poverty, and rise again as the
first truly American poet. But poets, and indeed great artists as
a class, seem to yield their best only under pressure. The grape
must be crushed if we would have wine. Give a poet "society" at
his feet and he sings no more, or sings as Tennyson has been
singing of late years--fit strains to prepare us for the disgrace
he has brought upon the poet's calling.
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